10 tips for a legendary festival experience (the anti-list)
By Josie Simon, June 9 2024—
Welcome to your misguided guide to having the most legendary festival experience ever! Forget curated playlists, seasoned camping gear and chill vibes. If you follow these anti-tips, you will be the chaotic festival hero we never knew we needed. Read on and embrace the chaos!
1. Request donations for Mormon missionaries
Why party in peace when you can bring Brother Ezekiel along? Have him solicit church donations in the mosh pit. Imagine the surprised faces as solemnity mingles with merriment.
2. Evangelize the Joe Rogan Podcast
Nothing says, “‘festival enlightenment”’ like quoting Joe Rogan. Randomly interrupt conversations to share how the podcast changed your life and taught you to be an “alpha male.” Just remember to bring sturdy earplugs for when festival-goers begin their uncoordinated chorus of groans.
3. Bring illegal fireworks
Why settle for the festival’s professionally orchestrated fireworks show when you can play a pyrotechnician and frighten a crowd of thousands? Feel the thrill as security chases you through the campsite, your bag of illicit sparklers illuminating the night. Nothing says “legendary experience” quite like narrowly avoiding festival expulsion!
4. Spread musical snobbery
Arm yourself with pretentious opinions and scorn anyone who enjoys the headliner’s newer hits. “Oh, you like their new stuff? Pity. Their first album was raw, real… you wouldn’t understand.” Bonus points if you can shed a single, convincing tear at the memory of the band’s supposed golden age.
5. Wear brand new Doc Martens
Seasoned festival-goers will tell you not to break in new boots but what do they know? Slide into a pristine pair of Doc Martens, untainted by prior use. Revel in the blisters, the agony and the chance to tell everyone about how you’re suffering “for fashion.”
6. Be overly self-centered
Forget being a team player. Make every festival decision for you and about you. Insist the group spends two hours finding organic, gluten-free, fair-trade cotton candy just to make you happy. Your friends will love this new side of you — trust.
7. Complain about your adult body
Stand in line for overpriced vegan taco bowls while loudly whining about the fading glow of your high school physique. Tell anyone within earshot just how unfair life’s aging process has been to you. Surprise—no one asked, but everyone now knows!
8. Start a fight over Karl Marx
Festivals are all about unity and shared joy—so why not spice it up with some intellectual conflict? Log onto your SOCI 201 D2L forum and start a heated debate over Marx’s concept of class consciousness, preferably while the headliner is mid-performance.
9. Obnoxiously large signs
Wave a massive sign during shows, blocking visibility for those behind you. Write something irresistible like “Marry Me, [Performer’s Name]!” The crowd’s admiration (or annoyance) is just a sign away. You might even get a passing glance from the stage if you’re lucky.
10. Pontificate on life’s inevitability
Every euphoric festival moment is heightened by the melancholy contemplation of mortality. Stand in line for the porta-potty and strike up deep conversations about how death is inevitable. Be the festival philosopher who leaves lines of relieved strangers questioning their existence.
This article is part of our fake news humour section.